Congratulations to Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer

NCSE offers its congratulations to Carl Zimmer for winning the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award for 2012 in the large newspaper category. Zimmer will receive $3000 and a plaque at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston in February 2013, in recognition of three articles on evolution, microbes, and scientific journal retractions he wrote for The New York Times in 2011 and 2012. A press release issued on November 14, 2012, explained:

The judges praised Zimmer's entry as an example of sustained excellence in reporting on a range of science topics. His story about evolution at work on organisms living in and around New York City — from white-footed mice in an urban park to native ants to fish in the Hudson River — was a "surprising, intriguing, and amusing look at science in unexpected places," said contest judge Laura Helmuth, science editor for the online magazine Slate. Robert Lee Hotz, a science writer for The Wall Street Journal, said Zimmer's reporting on urban evolution and on the microbes that exist on and in the human body "makes us see the world with new eyes." At the same time, Hotz added, Zimmer "does not shy from exposing the shortcomings and frauds of science, as retractions and examples of misconduct become more numerous."